As the number of users and applications around the world grows, there is an ever increasing need for more and more data storage for storing various resources. These resources may include for example: files such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, slide presentations, images, videos, etc.; stored communication histories such as emails, IM chat history, etc.; user profile information such as contact details, social media profiles, etc.; and/or sites such as websites, document sharing sites, etc. Such resources may originate from a variety of applications installed on the users' terminals and/or hosted online, such as word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, social media applications, file sharing applications, etc.
Online storage has grown in popularity. Using online storage such resources can be stored online on the “cloud”, meaning the resources are stored on a server system accessible via the Internet, the server system typically comprising multiple server units implemented in more than one data centre and/or geographic location. Techniques for distributed storage and processing via a network such as the Internet are known in the art.
It is also known for users to make their own resources available to other users, such as those within the same organization (e.g. company). For instance this may allow one or more other users to view the resource, subscribe to updates to the resource, or even modify the resource. In some cases the resource may be access controlled, in that only one or some specified other users (but not all) are allowed access to the resource. In this case the resource may comprise metadata specifying who is permitted access.